Reporting a Crime

Posted on Tuesday, November 01, 2016
Reporting a crime

Family Watchdog often gets emails with tips about sex offenders. Sometimes the writer of the email is wanting to report a known sex offender for something or they want to report a sex crime that happened where the sex offender has not been caught yet. Here at Family Watchdog, we cannot submit those tips to where they need to go to be seen.

For example, when we receive a email that states, " Joe Smith at 123 Main street has kids at his house often" we have no way of reporting that kind of email.

So what is the best way to report a crime or sex offender related crime?

If you are reporting a sex offender that is registered, your best bet would be to contact the registering state police involved. You can call them or email them to report information on a sex offender. We have a compiled list of all the important phone numbers at: http://www.familywatchdog.us/StateRegistries.asp

Do you know of a crime that needs to be reported? You can report any crime with http://wetip.com/. But here at Family Watchdog, we like CrimeStoppers.

About Crimestoppers (taken from http://www.crimestoppersusa.org/profile/)
Local Crime Stoppers programs are non-profit organizations led by citizens against crime. Some Crime Stoppers programs offer cash rewards of up to $1000 to persons providing anonymous information that leads to the felony arrest of criminals and fugitives. Information is received through anonymous Crime Stoppers tips that are received through a secure tips line or through a secure web connection manned by a professional program coordinator. Each caller is assigned a code number for the purpose of ensuring anonymity.

Crime Stoppers is based on the principal that someone other than the criminal has information that can solve a crime and was created to combat the three major problems faced by law enforcement in generating that information:
◾Fear of REPRISAL
◾An attitude of APATHY
◾Reluctance to get INVOLVED

Crime Stoppers resolves these problems by:
◾Offering ANONYMITY to people who provide information about crimes.
◾Paying REWARDS when the information supplied leads to arrest.

We had the chance to talk to a detective from Crime stoppers and ask a few questions to get the information you may want to know!

Did you know that CrimeStoppers is all over the US and also in other COUNTRIES? When a crime is reported, it is 100% anonymous. At the end of each tip - you get a code, which upon ARREST, you can call in and redeem a cash reward for your information that led up to the arrest. Each area in the US is different in the amount offered as a reward, but we have seen up to $1000 be offered!

How do you know that you will remain anonymous? When CrimeStoppers receives a subpoena for court they do not use your name, phone number, IP address or physical address, they use that code that you received when submitting your tip. So instead of "Jon Doe reported this crime", it would read "Anonymous tipper 10-2-1279" submitted the tip that lead to the arrest. See! Your name would never be in court documents or on a computer!

What is the difference between reporting a crime with Crime Stoppers and the local police? We were told that the difference is the cash reward that is offered by CrimeStoppers and the level of security that goes into keeping you anonymous. With the detective that we talked to, he is the only detective with the city's crime-stoppers, and that is for a very large city with over 300,000 people!

If you have details of a crime that have not been reported, report it. It's not snitching, it's helping get justice!